


May You Be With The Force

by Primarybufferpanel (ArwenLune)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Dred Priest (mentioned), Dred Priest Had It Coming, F/M, Gen, Jedi euphemisms, Soft Wars AU, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, some mention of heavy themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-25
Updated: 2020-08-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:21:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26110108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/pseuds/Primarybufferpanel
Summary: "Will you tell me what happened to Priest?"
Relationships: Colt (Star Wars)/Shaak Ti
Comments: 10
Kudos: 154
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	May You Be With The Force

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Lie](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25345630) by [CmonCmon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/CmonCmon/pseuds/CmonCmon). 



> Set in the [Soft Wars universe](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775) where everything is lovely and good.
> 
> This story leans up against/refers to the [Raising Warriors](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1835518) series (also set in Soft Wars) by CmonCmon
> 
> With thanks to RogueLadyVader for cheerleading me into posting this <3

Colt lit a lamp and settled in by the fireplace in the house on Concord Dawn he hoped would become his and Shaak's. Not only his. The bare bones were there, just enough to live in; he liked the idea of making the furnishings, collecting what he wanted piece by piece. It felt good to have projects, to make things with his hands.

He picked up sandpaper and the piece of the carved bedframe he'd been working on and waited for the call.

It was early morning on Coruscant; when Shaak established the call the creases of her pillow were still visible on her lekku. She curled around her oversized mug of tea and smiled at him with sleep-squinty eyes.

"Good morning, dearest. How was your day?" she asked, her voice that lovely low timbre it had in the early mornings. Little Gods, he missed her.

They spoke of inconsequential things for a few minutes and then, when she was more awake, they got back to the serious subject they'd left off on before she went to sleep.

"Why didn't you call me on it, when I brought Rancor to Kamino?" Colt asked.

It'd been on his mind, on and off, ever since it happened years ago. He'd brought ten times the number of men that he was supposed to bring, desperate to keep his already battered men from being sent right back to the frontlines. He remembered the sweat trickling down his back under his armour, remembered mentally reciting the reasoning he'd worked out for himself. Anything to make the Jedi General accept them. Anything to let him keep his men with him instead of making him choose and send the rest back out into war without so much as a break.

She had to have known. But the General had welcomed them without blinking.

He'd been thinking about it again since he told the story to Steady, the young vod they'd been forced to let suffer under Davin. And for the first time, Colt felt like it was a thing that could be asked. Whatever incriminating came out of this conversation no longer mattered, here on Concord Dawn. She was no longer his General.

The holo flickered a little. Colt could tell Shaak shifted back in her seat, settling in for the conversation. Her voice was gentle, inquisitive.

"Call you on what?"

He'd grown too used to being near her, when he didn't need to spell things out because she could pick things up from his thoughts when he couldn't find the words. She didn't read his mind—even if he'd told her that was fine with him, she didn't—but he could project a feeling at her, an image. A shortcut in a conversation.

He didn't have that option now. Maybe he should have waited until she was back. On the other hand, that assumption, that he didn't need to say things because she would know, had lead him to miss completely that Shaak had not expected to come with them to Concord Dawn. That she'd spent the entire time they'd been loading up ships expecting to be left behind. Colt liked to think he'd learned the value of saying things even if he thought they might already be known.

"When I brought you six hundred Rancors when I'd been told to bring sixty, and lied to your face about it."

"Oh, _Colt_."

She made the face he associated with being pulled in for an embrace. He'd never thought a Jedi would be tactile until he got to know her in private. It was only since they were on Concord Dawn that he'd learned that Skywalker and Secura were just as tactile outside their roles of Generals, and their padawans even more so.

"You needed to be there on Kamino," she said finally. "All of you."

He wondered if she meant that she'd felt that the men had been at their breaking point and needed the reprieve, or that she needed them on Kamino. Or perhaps both.

"And I… I needed you there too," Shaak continued, head tilting thoughtfully. She leaned out of view for a moment to pick up a bag of the small dried meat snacks from Shili.

Colt smiled when he recognised them. She used to have the very very occasional bag of it arrive on Kamino, carefully rationed to last as long as possible. She'd still shared with him whenever they sat together to discuss cadet progress and trainers. He'd felt so honoured by that.

He had once owed Ponds an entire training cycle of regular updates on the ARC trainees in exchange for one bag of the stuff. He'd had no regrets; Shaak had lit up from the gift, and he'd carried the warmth of that with him for weeks.

"It was a relief to have you all with me," she finally continued. "To share the weight of the guardianship a little. To be my eyes; I knew I wasn't seeing enough, before you arrived."

They'd discussed this before, how she'd always wanted to be told about problems with cadets, with trainers, with Kaminoans. Her power to make large changes had been frustratingly limited; he'd seen her swallow back tears about that more than once. She'd done what she could to curb the worst, to protect the vod'ikase from dispassionate decisions and cruel trainers. Not enough, never enough. They'd bonded over that.

They were both silent for a while, comfortable. He missed her, when she was away for duties at the Coruscant temple, but this helped. These moments of being in each other's presence, even if they were worlds apart.

He knew he could ask, that she had never denied him questions and she certainly wouldn't now, but he still needed to work himself up to the question. It was a secure line. They were a long time and a long distance away from anything that could mean repercussions to what she might answer.

"Will you tell me what happened to Priest?"

It was an ugly subject in multiple ways. Colt had known, all of the CCs had known, that Priest was a brutal trainer and that by the time Shaak arrived on Kamino, Priest had already been reprimanded to tone it down. Colt's batchmate Neyo had been one of Priest's initial cadets, and he had a notion of how bad it had been before the longnecks stepped in.

By the time Colt had arrived with Rancor, it had been… brutal but not involved casualties. Just a steady stream of dead-eyed young commandos and a smaller but equally steady stream of broken young vode who couldn't hack it under Priest.

The latter were hard to reintegrate with the normal cadets. They struggled socially, tended to integrate poorly into squads and had lost all concept of teamwork.

Sometimes they disappeared.

Colt had been with his General when they found out what happened to them.

'Honoured their request to be decommissioned' was what the longneck had said in its expressionless way.

"I see."

He'd never heard that tone in his General's voice before or since.

It had barely registered through his own murderous rage. Priest was going to—Colt was going to _kill_ that bastard.

"No. You are not," she had said, in that moment every bit the cold, distant Jedi General.

"All due respect General, but—"

"You are going to go to your quarters, and you will stay there until firstmeal. That is an _order_."

He'd never been that angry with her, ever. She'd never given him a direct order before. Never needed to. Once it was given, the only thing he could do was obey her, fuming every step of the way.

He hadn't understood that she was protecting him.

The next morning, Priest had been gone. All his things packed, his quarters empty. One of the older Delta-6 training jets had disappeared with him.

She hadn't spoken of it, just quietly arranged for Priest's cadets to be reassigned to other, better trainers. She'd given Colt custody over the seven remaining cadets who'd been discarded by Priest, suggesting that he and his ARC troopers take control of their training.

The vode had spoken of little else for a tenday, from Rancor troopers down to the second cycle cadets. Had Priest really just _left_? Would he have? The camera footage seemed to suggest so. Had the General _made_ him leave?

Colt had never asked until now.

Shaak's shimmering blue shape had gone still and thoughtful, and Colt felt like he should have led into the subject better, though he wasn't sure how. She may still choose not to answer, and then he'd drop it. Whatever her part had been, she'd seemed distant, the tenday afterward, less inclined to socialise with him or the other men. She'd meditated a lot and trained in her quarters.

"I…. I released him to the Force," she finally said quietly.

Colt paused to let that sink in, because he was fairly sure that was a Jedi euphemism for 'killed him' and he needed a moment to process. He wasn't sure what he had believed until now. That she'd somehow convinced or more likely compelled Priest to pack up and leave without a word to anybody, or… this.

Could he ask her how she'd done it?

His fantasy of it had involved her lightsaber, a quick, decisive stroke, a falling corpse. She was smarter than that. Nothing like that had shown on the security footage, and while that could be faked, it would have been a lot of trouble. From what he could pierce together she'd compelled Dread Priest to pack up and leave, and either sabotaged his spacecraft, or compelled him to disrupt the ship's launch vectors. He'd have burned up in atmo and crashed as pieces into the endless ocean, and who would be able to prove anything? The Delta-6 was an outdated vessel. Autopilots failed sometimes.

The Jedi didn't hesitate to kill in battle, or if there was no other choice, but he'd never heard of that happening without direct, immediate provocation in combat. He remembered her somber retreat in the days after Priest's disappearance and figured it had probably taken some effort to live with her decision.

"I love you," he blurted.

It startled a laugh out of her, sudden and freeing, the tips of her lekku curling a little in pleasure.

"—and I'm sorry for being so angry with you, that day."

"You were forgiven for that a long time ago," she said with a warm smile. "I knew one of us was going to do something, and that the repercussions if you were caught would be far worse for you."

"Still."

She'd _killed_ for them. She'd been Vode in spirit before Concord Dawn had been much more than a wild dream.

"Does Cody know?" Colt felt a strange desire for Cody to know what she had done for the vode.

"I don't imagine he does, I've only ever spoken of it with one person."

Colt felt briefly disappointed that that person hadn't been him, and then considered what she might have needed to talk about. Thinking back of the days after Priest's disappearance, she might have needed a fellow Jedi to confide in. He thought about the Jedi he knew she kept in touch with on a personal basis.

"Quinlan?" he guessed.

Her eyes widened in surprise.

"Yes. How did you arrive there?"

"He seems the non-judgemental type." In her place, it's who Colt would have called. "Would you mind if I told my brothers about this?"

She was silent for a long time, thoughtful.

"It's not something I would like to be known for," she said finally.

That wasn't a no.

"I can be select with it."

She smiled at him.

"I trust you."

Colt didn't think that would ever not make him shiver.

There was a knock on her door, and Colt hears two younglings; from the sound of them, the two Togruta Shaak had taken to mentoring when she was on Coruscant, wanting to give them a connection to their culture. He would never get tired of watching her interact with children.

They wrapped up their call easily; the planetary rotations worked out to a morning and an evening call for both of them. Sometimes long, sometimes brief, as long as there was a moment.

Colt checked the chrono. It wasn't late yet. Cody was definitely up, and not that far away.

He wasn't sure why he was so eager to share his knowledge of Priest's end; it wasn't like the confirmation that Shaak had killed the bastard would be shocking news to anybody. It _had_ been the more popular theory.

It was just—

Cody didn't _know_ Shaak, not beyond a few public meetings. Her residence on Kamino had begun long after Cody had left, and Colt knew the Vod'alor had heard more bad than good about what went on on Kamino. Like many vode, he might blame Shaak for not doing enough, or conflate her with the Kaminoans. Judge her for not stopping all the bad things before they happened.

The Vod'alor had allowed Shaak on Concord Dawn on Colt's word. While it was flattering to be trusted to make the call, Colt couldn't help but want for Cody to _know_ her. To see her not as a distant council member, but as the woman Colt loved—kind, warm, with quiet humour. And under all her grace and dignity and Jedi robes, a hunter with sharp fangs and a skeleton lined with pure beskar.

 _She killed for our little brothers_ , he wanted to tell the Vod'alor. How much more Vode could she get?


End file.
